Trenchant, occasionally splenetic, and always brutally funny, Romanian-born Codrescu confronts the convulsions of our post-ideological world at a time when "the advent of cyberspace and the caffeinating of America has occurred simultaneously." With these newest essays from 1994 and 1995 - some that are straight off the NPR airwaves and some that have served as magazine pieces or speeches - Codrescu takes us on a roller-coaster tour through our own dramatically changing country. Making stops along the way to observe the shifting American landscape, our incisive guide confronts, among other curiosities: the ever-increasing illusion of democracy; the Internet and sex in the cyber age; the rise and rerise of the religious Right; the grotesquerie born out of the cooling shards of post-Communism; the transformation of the American palate; the ascendance of vampirism; and the new millennial contagion. Andrei Codrescu has been keeping his audience abreast of the absurdities of American culture for over ten years, and his trademark irony, buoyant paranoia, and mystical cynicism are once again in ample evidence in this collection. Along for the ride are all of his familiar characters, including puppets, fascists, airplanes, and Greyhound buses, but now his menagerie has expanded to include one electronically adjusted dog, Miss America, and an alligator god.

Beloved NPR commentator and popular author Andrei Codrescu makes a stunning return to historical fiction, detailing the adventurous life and erotic times of the famed illuminist Giacomo Casanova. In his national bestseller The Blood Countess, Andrei Codrescu brought to life the bloodthirsty royal Elizabeth Bathory, who embodied nearly all the contradictions of the seventeenth century. Now he depicts the astonishing life of the legendary Casanova, as the old adventurer relives his life while writing his memoirs in a provincial Bohemian castle at the end of the eighteenth century. Far from being defeated by age, Casanova delights in the maidservants, reacts with intellectual vigor to the unfolding of the French Revolution, and collaborates with Mozart on Don Giovanni. Long considered the rhapsodist of an age of aristocratic mirth, scandal, and innumerable affairs, Casanova was also a first-rate intellect who corresponded and argued with Voltaire and Rousseau. His published work, besides the celebrated History of My Life, includes a multivolume fantasy fiction novel that predates and anticipates Jules Verne; translations of Italian classics into French; and a number of plays that were produced on the great stages of Europe. Casanova's romantic legend overshadowed his literary work, which was, for the most part, not published until 1960. The fate of his writings was nearly as fabulous and intriguing as that of their author. Still, even in abridged, bowdlerized, and fragmentary form, Casanova's memoirs have inspired writers as diverse as Flaubert, Stendhal, Hermann Hesse, and now, Andrei Codrescu. Codrescu's vivid fictional account illuminates the interest we still have in this uncompromising and magical libertine, while it imagines how his life would have continued if Casanova's immortality had extended beyond the literary. In Codrescu's retelling of the Casanova legend, readers are introduced to an age far less inhibited than our own, and far more interesting in its vices. At once a libertine, a defender of women, a reactionary, a revolutionary, a brilliant observer, and a visionary, Casanova was a man ahead of his time both in thought and in action. Finally, in this inventive and absorbing work, Casanova is given due credit for his writings, his philosophies, and, of course, for the amorous magic that has been made known to so many.

In praise of his poetry, The New York Times calls Andrei Codrescu "one of our most prodigiously talented and magical writers." Part genius, part tongue-in-cheek provocateur, Codrescu is an audacious and passionate poet. The heart of this first new collection in nearly a decade is a beautiful conceit containing the "recently discovered" correspondence between a warrior and a courtesan in fourteenth-century China. These tender, timeless verses contrast nicely with tough, funny -poems about modern life and millennial malaise. Andrei Codrescu is a celebrated poet, novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and commentator on National Public -Radio. A World Heavyweight Champion Poet, his many awards include the Literature Prize of the Romanian Cultural Foundation and the Peabody Award for his film Road Scholar. Born in Romania, Andrei Codrescu lives in New Orleans.